Have You Seen Heavener Lately?

No, I don't mean have you BEEN to Heavener lately, I mean have you 'seen' it lately. Okay, so that's my poor attempt to make a catchy lead-in to my short story. Read on...

If you spend much time on the Internet, you've surely spent some time with Google's map program...or Google Earth, if you really want to have some fun. Well, if you haven't visited either of these lately, you'll want to.

I remember several months ago when Google first announced that they were doing something called "street views". This was their attempt to send vehicles with cameras on them around major cities so that you could actually see photos of the city as if you were in a vehicle driving down the street. Years earlier, they had amazed me by making satellite views of cities available on their website. I can remember typing my home address in the Dallas metro area into their search window and being able to zoom down from above and actually see my vehicle parked in my driveway. You could scan the entire city the same way.

When 'Street Views" became available, instead of being miles above the earth looking down, you were at street level looking directly at the limited sites available....some major cities, National parks, monuments, etc. Finally, you could even "drive" down the middle of Times Square and other major cities and see a seamless view of the storefronts on some streets.

Well, this past week...for the first time...I just happened to enter my old home address in Heavener, Oklahoma into the Google maps search window. Lo and behold, Google indicated that I could go to a "street level" view of the Heavener address I had just entered. Up until that time, I had only been able to see a very distorted satellite view of Heavener...not clear enough to make out streets, not to mention individual homes. After clicking the indicated button, here's what I saw:
There I was....as if I was sitting in my car in the middle of the street in front of my old house in Heavener. Maybe I'm easily amazed, but I thought this was really something neat. I can't say that they (Google...or, rather, their contractors) drove down every street in Heavener (I didn't check out Cox Edition, Bill), but there was mine. By clicking on those little white arrows you see on the 'line' floating above the street, you can move down the street about 30' at a jump.

So, if you're interested in checking out Heavener and you haven't been there in awhile, this is a quick way to do it. I would say these photos were made within the past 12 months.

I also found street views of Wister and Poteau.

To get there, in your browser type in:

http://www.google.com/maps

Enter the address you're looking for in the search window at the upper left corner, just to the right of the familiar sign Google .

Have fun...